Workforce Collaboration

Adroit & Associates offers services that ensure organisations can achieve a successful roll-out of SharePoint in a predictable and low risk way.

SharePoint as a product is sophisticated and has many features that can, just by configuration, provide solutions. Additionally, it has a workflow designer that enables automated alerting, reminding and other types of automated prompting without the need to be a developer (although a technical bent and regular use is required for best results). In essence, SharePoint allows coding to be done to enable more sophisticated applications to be developed and to automate integration with other applications such as accounting or CRM systems.

Adroit & Associates has a breadth of experience from configuring Intranet provision to developing full blown database style applications that are integrated with 3rd party applications.

During our years of working with clients we have evolved an approach that reduces risk, builds trust and facilitates the cost effective roll-out of SharePoint within organisations.

Our usual approach

Within Adroit & Associates we have people with experience in all the approaches, from configuration only through to full-blown bespoke solutions. We pride ourselves on choosing the best approach to deliver the best value solutions for our clients.

Our usual approach with clients in the early days of the relationship is to do work on a per project fixed price basis. Each project would follow the following process:

After initial discussion we produce an outline of the project and a budgetary estimate

On approval we produce a fully costed formal project definition. We are happy to fix the price of the project at that cost. The project definition step is charged at 15% of the budgetary estimate.

Depending on the size of the project the delivery of functionality may be broken down into a series of iterations. Each iteration is designed to deliver usable functionality that enables the client to confirm that the project is progressing in the right way. Each iteration is sized to be deliverable within one month.

When trust has been built clients are often happy to move to a less formal monthly budgeted cost basis. As part of this approach we agree a fixed monthly fee with the client and we manage delivery of functionality to not exceed the monthly budget.

The benefits of this approach are:

It facilitates a quicker flow from request to delivery which improves the perception of IT.

It maintains control as the arrangement can be terminated at any time.

We provide a monthly report of all work that has been done so that the value of the work being delivered can be constantly reviewed.

We handle all work requests and divide them into one of three categories based on our estimate of time required to complete:

1. Quick Win - 0-2 hours work

2. Minor Work - 2-10 hours work

3. Project - 10+ hours work

Adroit Approach to SharePoint Implementations

Approval Process:

Quick wins require no approval but we agree an overall maximum number of quick wins done in any month

Minor work requires an email outline with estimate and emailed approval is required

A project goes through the full project definition process usually with a formal purchase order required to proceed

This works well in a SharePoint environment where so much can be achieved through configuration.

Our desire in all the work that we do is to empower interested individuals in the client organisation to do as much of the configuration work themselves. We offer our experience to help and guide the approach to specific solutions and are available for the more complex areas of the solution.